Paul Tollett knew he had to meet some sky-high expectations when he launched Stagecoach: California’s Country Music Festival in 2007. That’s because this veteran promoter is also the founder of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, which over the past dozen years has grown into the nation’s most popular and successful annual weekend extravaganza for fans of indie-rock, hip-hop, electronic dance music and various offshoots and hybrids.

Both festivals are held, over three consecutive weekends in April, on the grassy fields of the sprawling Empire Polo Club in Indio. Both draw about 20 percent of their audiences from San Diego County, according to Tollett.

Coachella, which is sold out, will be held Friday through Sunday, and April 19-21. The music lineup is identical both weekends, with Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Stone Roses and Phoenix headlining a lineup of more than 100 acts.

Stagecoach, for which some tickets are still available, takes place April 26-28. Topping the bill this year are such proudly middle-of-the-country-road artists as Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum and the Zac Brown Band.

Each festival draws a distinct audience, with different aesthetic preferences and lifestyles. That means mostly young hipsters for Coachella, and a more family-oriented, RV-driving crowd for Stagecoach — with an appreciation for beer as a common denominator that links the two events.

At Coachella and Stagecoach, the onus is on Tollett to ensure that both festivals leave their audiences feeling suitably wowed.

Musical cousins

“If we were going to be judged for Stagecoach a week or two after Coachella, we wanted to be sure the festival could stand on its own and stand up to the comparisons of Coachella,” said Tollett, who is the president of the Los Angeles-based concert production company Goldenvoice.

“It’s a different kind of music at Stagecoach, but we didn’t want it to be trimmed or toned down. We wanted it to be Coachella, but for country music.”

He chuckled.

“I consider Stagecoach the country cousin of Coachella, basically, the country version of Coachella,” Tollett added. “Or, as someone told me: ‘Coachella, with songs!’ ”

Make that Coachella with songs, plus a more relaxed vibe and a lot more room to roam, since the 55,000 attendance cap at Stagecoach is about 30,000 fewer than at Coachella.

Stagecoach has grown steadily in popularity since its inception in 2007, when the lineup included Alan Jackson, George Strait, Willie Nelson and San Diego’s Nickel Creek.

Conversely, Coachella’s ticket sales fared so poorly when the festival debuted in 1999 — with Beck, Morrissey, Tool and Rage Against the Machine co-headlining — that no sequel was held in 2000. The festival gingerly resumed in 2001, after Goldenvoice was acquired by AEG Live, the world’s second-largest concert promoter.

Another three years passed before the festival achieved its first sellout (with Radiohead topping the bill). Since then, it has grown exponentially in both popularity and size.

Last year, Coachella expanded to two consecutive three-day weekends — each with the same lineup. The 2012 edition of Coachella drew 80,726 fans the first weekend and 77,661 the second, while Stagecoach 2012 drew 55,772 fans. Together, the two 2012 Coachella weekends grossed more than $47 million, an all-time record for any festival. The combined attendance for Coachella and Stagecoach last year was a record 650,000.

(After this interview with Tollett took place last week, the Indio City Council voted to extend Goldenvoice’s contract until 2030 to stage festivals at the Empire Polo Ground. Goldenvoice will also be able to expand from three to five weekends annually at the Indio site.)

National footprint

“Stagecoach has been remarkably successful, especially considering the general lack of radio stations that play country music in California. There are some country-music festivals in other states, but none of them seem to have the national footprint that Stagecoach does,” said Gary Bongiovanni, the publisher of Pollstar, the concert industry’s leading weekly publication.

“Coachella has cemented itself as an event, in and of itself. It’s spring break in the desert, and it doesn’t matter who the acts are, because it’s very well curated. The bottom line is, the audience that goes to Coachella feel they got their money’s worth, but they are not going for one particular act. I don’t think Stagecoach has developed yet to the level where it’s all about the event.”

Stagecoach, however, still relies on the strength of its headliners to ensure large attendance figures.

Last year’s edition, which featured Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and Jason Aldean, was the first to officially draw a sold-out crowd of 55,000. And, like Coachella, Stagecoach can provide invaluable exposure for rising young artists eager to make a big impact.

Jason Aldean, who performed at the first edition of Stagecoach in 2007 and has since become a major star, can personally attest to that impact.

“To this day," he said in a 2011 U-T San Diego interview, "people come up to me saying: ‘I saw you at Stagecoach (in 2007), and that’s when I became a fan of yours.’ We made a lot of fans that day.”

Those fans are growing increasingly younger at Stagecoach, a phenomenon Tollett attributes in part to the popularity of Taylor Swift and other fresh-faced country-pop artists. And, he noted, the Stagecoach audience likes rock music -- more than a few Stagecoach acts each year include a classic-rock cover in their sets -- but not the kind of proudly left-of-center rock that is Coachella's bread-and-butter.

“I already have two headliners booked for Stagecoach next year, and I haven’t even thought about (next year’s) Coachella yet,” said Tollett, who cites watching “Hee Haw” on TV as a kid as his first exposure to country music.

What sets Stagecoach apart, though, isn’t its superstar country-pop headliners. Rather, it’s Tollett’s thoughtful inclusion of bluegrass, alternative-country and vintage traditional artists, many of whom are ignored by most pop-oriented country radio stations.

This year, that includes Texas-swing veterans Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, left-of-center country band The Little Willies (whose lead singer is Norah Jones) and the acoustic balladry of Nickel Creek alum Sara Watkins. At previous editions of Stagecoach, Tollett has carefully mixed in such bluegrass greats as Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas, rockabilly pioneer Wanda Jackson, the San Diego-bred country-swing band Hot Club of Cowtown, and rock and country legend Jerry Lee Lewis.

“Just in general, we like the diversity when we’re putting a festival together,” Tollett said.

“Even if the main stages are where the majority of people are going, we like having bluegrass, alt-country and cowboy storytelling.”